But here’s what you may not know: some of this bullying is sex-based harassment that’s prohibited by Title IX.

Title IX is often discussed in the context of equity in school sports, and it’s done a lot to improve girls’ opportunities to play. But it’s more than that. It’s a federal civil rights law that prohibits all forms of sex discrimination in education. Among other things, Title IX protects students from bullying and harassment based on failure to conform to gender norms or stereotypes about how a boy or girl is “supposed” to act.

For example, a boy is protected by Title IX if he is targeted for having effeminate mannerisms, participating in non-traditional extracurricular activities (e.g. dance or theatre) or dressing in a manner perceived as “gay.” So is a girl targeted for having short hair, wearing baggy clothes, taking shop rather than home economics, etc.

This means that LGBTQ students who are bullied or harassed based on gender stereotypes are protected by Title IX, even though there isn’t a federal civil rights law explicitly prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (yet – The Student Non-Discrimination Act would change that and prohibit discrimination in K-12 public schools on the basis of a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or association with an LGBT person.).

So what can you do?

Speak up! A school must do something about harassment that it knows or reasonably should know about. A school is required to investigate the harassment in a prompt, thorough and fair way. If a school determines that sexual harassment has occurred, it must take effective steps to end the harassment and prevent it from happening again.

#MeToo detractor Andrew Sullivan is back in New York Magazine this week with his latest gripe about those pesky feminist harpies. This time, he argues, “left-feminists” have gone too far in refusing to accept what Sullivan says is the scientific, biological truth that men are naturally sexually aggressive.

Frankly, Andrew Sullivan hasn’t been relevant since 2011, when he was best known for peddling race science, so you may want to take his “it’s just science!” defenses of the structural inequality with a grain of salt. But he’s not the only #MeToo critic to advance the idea that ...

Yesterday, actress America Ferrera and Mónica Ramírez, president of the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance (Alianza Nacional de Campesinas), appeared on the Today show, to talk about the new Time’s Upcampaign to end workplace sexual violence and harassment.

TODAY Show host Savannah Guthrie spent a lot of time directing questions and commentary to Ferrera (“you’re having a baby!”), before finally turning to Ramírez, saying, “It’s interesting because you [farmworkers] reached out to the Hollywood actresses in that industry, which you think of as a high-profile industry and women who do have a lot of power. And yet the focus now through this Times Up campaign is for women who don’t have that power.”

Ramírez responded perfectly, gently reminding Guthrie that farmworkers, who have been ...

Damn right.

Yesterday, actress America Ferrera and Mónica Ramírez, president of the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance (Alianza Nacional de Campesinas), appeared on the Today show, to talk about the new Time’s Upcampaign to end workplace sexual violence ...

Looking for signs of hope in 2018? 300 Hollywood women just launchedTimes Up, a massive, multi-pronged initiative to fight systemic sexual harassment — including a $13 million legal defense fund designed to support working-class women like janitors, restaurant workers, nurses, and farmworkers who don’t have the resources famous women do to speak up.

Here’s who that money could help: the female restaurant workers harassed by the manager who controls their shifts and paycheck; the hotel housekeepers who are flashed by guests who know the hotel won’t do anything about it; the seventy-five percent of women who reported harassment who were retaliated against for speaking up.

Oh, and remember the 700,000 women farm workers who ...

Looking for signs of hope in 2018? 300 Hollywood women just launchedTimes Up, a massive, multi-pronged initiative to fight systemic sexual harassment — including a $13 million legal defense fund designed to ...

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